More rape accusations made

A Spokane Police detective has received calls from 10 women who believe they were drugged after having drinks with a man who was charged last week with rape.

An 11th woman, who said she had a similar contact with the same man, spoke Friday with The Spokesman-Review.

Detective Jan Pogachar said the calls started coming in Thursday after the women read a story about the arrest of 57-year-old Arlin R. Jordin on a charge of second-degree rape.

“It’s just become a gorilla,” Pogachar said of her investigation. “They are all related to what they believe are drinks that were drugged.”

In some cases, the women met a man at a restaurant for drinks. In others, they answered advertisements for an apartment for rent.

Asked if all the reports are related, Pogachar said yes. Asked if Jordin is the suspect in all of the new reports, Pogachar replied: “No other name has come up.”

Jordin was arrested Dec. 3 after a woman told police that she answered Jordin’s advertisement for an apartment to rent in late November.

According to court documents, the 34-year-old woman accepted a couple of drinks Nov. 23 from Jordin and then blacked out. When she awoke, the documents state, she was naked in Jordin’s bed and disoriented.

The woman’s friend drove her to Holy Family Hospital for a rape examination.

A lab technician found Benzodiazepine in the woman’s system. “This drug is capable of rendering a person unconscious and exhibiting the same symptoms as victim … claims,” Spokane Police Officer M. Coleman wrote in her report.

A search warrant at Jordin’s apartment, at 1827 W. Ninth Apt. C., found several prescription drugs, including one, Temazepam, which is a Benzodiazepine-based medication, according to court records.

Jordin’s attorney, Bevan Maxey, said Wednesday that his client has legal prescriptions for all of the drugs found in his apartment and he’s confident that the facts will show client has not been engaged in any wrongdoing.

Maxey could not be reached late Friday to comment about the new reports received by Spokane Police.

Those 10 women detailed encounters that date back to 1992. Some came from 1997, 2000 and 2001 and a couple came from this year, Pogachar said. Two callers said they had been raped, she said. However, most of the reports are too old to prosecute.

“They were never reported because they weren’t sure what had happened,” she said of the callers. “Others said they were drugged and nothing happened to them sexually so they didn’t report it.”

A 47-year-old Portland real estate agent, who previously lived in Spokane, told a reporter Friday that she didn’t report her encounter with Jordin to police for similar reasons.

The real estate agent said she and her husband were separating in 1998 and she was looking to rent a room when she saw Jordin’s advertisement in The Inlander. On the Friday before Easter 1998, she called the number in the ad.

“He interviewed me at length on the phone,” the woman said. “He totally made sure I was vulnerable before he invited me over.”

The woman said she agreed to meet Jordin and look at the room he had for rent.

“He kept me at his house for two or three hours. In the meantime, here is a gentleman who is paying attention to me. I’m starved for attention,” she said.

The woman said Jordin invited her to join him on an errand. They mixed a couple of drinks and left in his Jaguar convertible, she said.

“We go back to his apartment. He gets me some vodka,” she said. “Because I was never unconscious, I don’t know if it was alcohol or something else. But he definitely had control of me.”

The next day, the woman said she was confused about what she should do.

“I was embarrassed that I had sex with a man. I was embarrassed that I was flattered by the attention,” she said. “I thought nobody will believe that it’s rape. I didn’t press charges because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. So I just didn’t do anything.”

Pogachar said many rape victims blame themselves for attacks.

“They tell themselves, ‘I shouldn’t have accepted that drink,’ or, ‘I should have fought harder.’ That’s the reason a lot of rape victims don’t report it to police,” she said.